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Monday, May 5, 2014

Gripping

I walked down the candy aisle of a neighborhood store last week and saw, to my dismay, that all the chocolate crème eggs were gone.

"No...no..." I uttered woefully as my four children watched me shove boxes around in the 75% off Easter candy, frantic for my fix.

They must be buried. Yes, surely, so I looked behind every chocolate bunny and cross, every box of egg-shaped confections. But they were gone.

Gone.

How was I supposed to battle my dejection, for what now could feed my chocolate addiction with so little inconvenience and such yumminess? Darn it! I should have bought more boxes when they were a mere 50% off.

Never mind that for the last month, while stuffing myself with boxes of chocolate eggs and English tea every Sunday, I had been feeling sluggish. My fatigue had gotten so bad that at first I wondered if there was an underlying health issue that was going to call my card any day. Then it occurred to me that I might possibly - just possibly - be suffering from a dangerous cocktail of chocolate-crème/high-fructose-corn-syrup poisoning. And, not for the first time in my life, I daydreamed about what life could be like without chocolate and sugar.

I might be truly healthy inside, as energetic as a two-year-old, own fewer wrinkles, and have substantially smaller grocery bills if I could just learn to give up the sweets.

This led me to consider other things I hold dear. Being the broadminded, expert daydreamer I am, I pondered an array of plagues on my freedom. I wondered what life could be like if I could renounce every other silly little addiction that keeps me grasping at trifles as if my life depended on them.

For instance, what might happen if could I give up the TV series Lost? A recent addiction, it already grips me in such a way that I try to hurry my kids to bed as soon as I can many nights. And it is really a double whammy, because I cannot resist the chance to finally sit and veg in the evenings, and I cannot bear to ignore the siren call of a good mystery, every episode of Lost being a good mystery!

But if, just if, I could vanquish the urge to find out what happens next, I might be more successful in many things. I might write here more often. I might improve my mind by studying constellations, learning all their names. I might play more games with my kids on Saturday afternoons.

And what if I could give up all mysteries - detective novels, crime shows? Maybe then I could stop assuming that every car that remains behind me too long on my route home is following me and stop thinking of new, crafty ways to lose the hounds.

Yet...what if, instead of giving up completely that which brings me pleasure, I really practiced moderation in all things? - ate only one chocolate crème egg at Eastertime, only watched an episode of Lost a week, only ate sweets - and just one slice or one square - on special occasions? What if I only desired those things that could improve my well-being and bring more happiness to my family? What would life look like then?

Well, then I might be free, free to be the hardworking, healthy, successful, unselfish, wife/mother/writer I was always meant to be.